'Bachelorette's Sex Ed Censor Sends Bad Message

Sex education can be an awkward topic to learn about when you're in school. No teenager wants to sit in a room with a group of people who aren't your friends, and talk about all of the things that have happened or will happen to your body as you grow up and grow into your sexuality. That said, sex education is super important for a lot of reasons — and it absolutely shouldn't be an awkward topic to talk about for grown men who should know how to openly talk about their bodies, sex, and sexuality without collapsing into a fit of giggles. However, it managed to be an awkward topic on Bachelorette — specifically when the male contestants gave sex education lessons to room full of very curious kids asking blunt questions about female puberty and how babies are made, they basically fell apart. Though it turned out the whole thing was a prank — the "students" in this classroom were actually child actors who were told to ask the most awkward questions in the world, so as to make the guys break down laughing — something kept distracting me from the fun of the date: A TON of the words and images that they guys were using to discuss the male and female anatomy were unfortunately bleeped or blurred out.

Now. I'm not sure what happened between that hilarious group date and the version that I saw on my television last night, but somewhere in the mix, a number of words and images were censored before making their way onto the screen. "Ejaculation" was one of them, for instance. "Penis" was another, which is regrettable because a technical term for human anatomy should in no way be considered a word worthy of censorship. At the very least, the word "vagina" made it through unscathed. Unfortunately, though, that's where the good stopped — soon after, the big bad "clitoris" was not only bleeped, but the mouth of the child saying it was also blurred as well. Even worse, the ultimate offender during this whole thing? The word "tampon" (or "tampin" as Joshua would say), which was covered with a black box because, you know, EW TAMPINS.

I get that television networks have standards that they have to adhere to, but the whole point of talking openly about bodies in a sex education class is to show that puberty and sex and all of the weird things our bodies do is a normal part of growing up, building relationships, and falling in love. And isn't that what the show is all about? By bleeping and blurring out the words, they're made taboo again — even as you show a classroom full of kids growing comfortable using them.

Image: ABC (3); Giphy